A Whole New WORLDZ

Greetings from California.

Today kicks off WORLDZ. WORLDZ is a platform like none other. It’s been defined by some as the Harvard of culture. It’s always a worthwhile gathering where many of the best and brightest brand marketers investing in culture come together to exchange ideas. It’s only done with a flair that makes it even more fun and inspiring. The past few years I’ve taught a master classes.Two years ago, I lead a class with rockstars and hollywood staples Joel and Benjy Madden. I really look up to these brothers. They are self made from bouncers in DC to pop stars with Good Charlotte. Now besides touring with their band and being Hollywood royalty are steady flexing their musical and entrepreneurial chops. It was really fun to teach a class with them. The purpose of that Worldz master course was to teach the audience how to harness the creative energy of music: to reinvigorate their organization by directly engaging with musicians and bringing them into the boardroom. When marketers utilize musicians as executives they become cultural liaisons for your ideas and can bring a whole new perspective to your business. They can demystify the nuances of culture, and put a real-world mirror up to your organization’s ideas. For an activity at the end, we broke up into groups and had each group come up with their own music strategy for a mock brand brief.

Last year, I lead a class with the two EDM superstar sisters Krewella (can you tell I have an affinity for siblings that go into business together… what up AK!) and their manager at the time, the incomparable, Jake Udell. In that class we discussed the artist “roadmap,” how to achieve market share, and the ways in which these ideas converge around the traditional business cycle and brand growth. We call it the “Rockstar Business Plan” and it was lessons every brand can learn from artists.

The amazing thing is that both of these classes have helped me to shape the direction of what I’m working on today.

The Madden lecture’s building music strategies for brands is a key pillar of what Nue does. Helps brands make deeper connections to their consumers by leveraging music. Our thesis is that every brand should have a music & entertainment marketing strategy and we can help you build yours and execute it. As for the Krewella class, there is so many lessons brand marketers can learn from artists. This in many ways is the premise to my first book which will hopefully be out sometime next year. You can pre order it here.

Anyway, it’s amazing how teaching can really hone ideas. Steel sharpens steel and being in a room full of bright brand marketers will hopefully not only continue to inspire my work and thus inspire the people affected by it. This year, I’m not going to be leading a master class. I’m doing more a give back in the form a mentoring session offering free consultations to attendees. It should all be interesting. I’m just glad to be out there spreading the good gospel. The music business is back and in many ways better than ever. Every brand can benefit from incorporating music into their brand strategy. That’s the wave I’m on and ways to make that better and easier for brand marketers to understand is a win for everyone involved from the industry to the artists to the brands to the consumers. Thank you to the WORLDZ team for the community and culture to help foster these ideas in music and many more worthwhile verticals.